The Other Side of Lincoln. Welby Thomas Cox, Jr.
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world out there. The life of any individual is so complete with its own set of peculiar problems and ever changing events that life can proceed in directions completely unrelated to the flow of historical circumstances. Had it not have been for the sneak attack and the miniball...Russell would have become an officer in the Confederacy...eyeball to eyeball...blue against gray...brother against brother...perhaps even facing the best friend he had ever known and commanded to kill, the order fulfilled, he might have also taken his own life as well.
But now he seemed to hear a soothing female voice...he didn’t believe that it was his mother’s but he could not be sure. He attempted to move but his entire body seemed to be suspended outside his mind. Gabe was unable to physically move any body part...nor, could he command his eyes to open. Was this Purgatory he wondered? The voice he kept hearing most certainly wasn’t Hell...so it must be Heaven...and it must be God.
Rags began to bark...the horses nickered. Over a slight rise she could hear and then see the reason for the animals’ excitement. She quieted them as the wagon approached and then stopped nearby. Ima held the gun beneath the seat.
Two men sat in the wagon, a stoop-shouldered rider made his way to her side.
“Afternoon, Ma’am...look like you been in some trouble.” The man said.
She was cautious and held tight to the repeater. “Yes we have been attacked by a band of Indians. Where being escorted to the fort by a Calvary detail when they ambushed. I am afraid all have been killed, except the two of us. This soldier is dying, unless I can get him the medical attention that he needs. Bad gunshot to the knee.” She was so frightened that she sounded enthusiastic.
“Got a little backwoods doctoring experience?” One of the men on the wagon said.
“Want I should take a look at the soldier?” he asked.
“Thank you very much; I would be obliged for any assistance.” She said graciously.
The man started down from the wagon seat. Rags barked and lunged at his boot.
“Rags!” she commanded, “Mind your manners.”
“Serious dog.” The man said as he climbed up onto the wagon and slipped down to the bed near Russell. She laid back the cover and the dressing on the gun shot knee.
“I fished him out of the river...don’t know how he survived...had all these leaches on his body...especially the knee.
“Ma’am, this leg got the gang green poison, already set in. It’s another two days to the settlement...I don’t believe he will make it. I am sorry but I think he is a goner.” The man said looking at her.
“We have come so far...he has fought so valiantly...is there nothing we can do.” She beseeched the stranger.
“Lady I don’t think there is a way in hell that he will make it...as he is, take off that leg above the knee...maybe you stop the gang green...it’s a crap shoot at best.” He said.
“Could you...would you I mean...have you ever had to do anything like remove a man’s leg.” She asked.
“Well no Ma’am...but I have seen it done and I have butchered many a buffalo.” He said with obvious pride as the other two men shook their heads, each taking turns spitting the tobacco chews they seemed to relish.
“Times a wastin’” she said.
Historical Review
Lincoln was no military man, although he had served briefly in the Illinois state militia, it was the weakest of his interest. But what he lacked in the tactics of the military he more than made up in a clever mind and the utilization of the written word through the law.
From the White House, the Lincoln’s could see the campfires of the Confederates. Mary Todd was frightened for Lincoln and her family...Lincoln tried to console her with promises that troops were coming from the north to protect the Capitol and the residence at the White House. Privately, Lincoln stewed over the failure of the
military under his predecessor, President Buchanan to provide appropriate military presence in the nation’s Capital.
His own experience in coming to Washington, disguised as an invalid... provided insight to the dangers that surrounded him. Maryland and particularly Baltimore provided the most turbulent and explosive threat to the safe transit and communication to the Capitol In order to circumvent the growing threat, Lincoln met with his Cabinet and announced that one of his first decisions would be the limited suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus along the rail lines between Washington and Philadelphia, especially targeting Baltimore.
The literal translation of the Latin Habeas Corpus is “{ that} you have the body.”; a Writ of Habeas Corpus is an order issued by a court of law for the release of an individual who is being held in custody. The law, an essential part of the Constitution, derived from the English law is designed to protect individuals from arbitrary imprisonment. It provides protection for everyone from being arrested without reasonable charges in the middle of the night.
It was and is one of the individuals protections of the law for its citizens that separates America from monarchies and other governments in which soldiers or police can literally knock on your door and drag you away to jail in your nightshirt without explanation.
With the suspension of habeas corpus, Lincoln authorized General Scott to make arrests without specific charges to prevent secessionist Marylanders from interfering with communications between Washington and the rest of the nation (some say it was instituted as well because Lincoln was under pressure from his old clients, the railroad industry). Additionally, Lincoln had vowed that the three remaining border states would not secede and to that end over the next few weeks, Baltimore’s Mayor William Brown, the police chief and nine members of the Maryland legislature were arrested to prevent them from voting to secede from the Union. Was Lincoln’s flagrant abuse of the law, to his own end, a confirmation of the other abuses for which the south had accused the government, without recourse for many years?
The answer may have been provided when an unknown, individual, John Merryman was arrested. Finally, Merryman’s attorney filed a petition, requesting the Writ of Habeas Corpus. The Chief Justice Roger Taney, a Marylander rendered his opinion. The author of the controversial opinion on the Dred Scott decision, Taney issued a writ of habeas corpus for Merryman, demanding that the authorities give a valid reason for his detention. The military refused, and Taney was concerned that Lincoln might have him arrested as well, issued an argument that only Congress could suspend and that Lincoln had broken the law.
Lincoln’s response to Taney came in a July address to the Congress by asking, “Whether all the laws, but one, (were) to go unexecuted, and the government itself to go to pieces, lest that one be violated?” Lincoln further argued that the Constitution further states that “the Privileges of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be
suspended, unless when, in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public safety may require it.”
Privately, Lincoln angrily exploded on the Chief Justice stating that he had intentionally backed Taney into a corner to challenge a demented legal mind that could have issued the Dred Scott opinion and that his own statement in defense of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus begged the greater question...”If Taney was so concerned about the Constitution, why hadn’t he and the others done anything to prevent secession?”
The answer to that question ultimately leaked to Taney and it is reported that Taney stated “that the south did not secede on fear of imprisonment... but rather, due to the tyrannical government abuses influenced by the northern interest and unfair taxation to support a growing lust for industrial expansion. The Constitution provides no recourse for thoughtful declarations in the absence of sanity and good will towards all, by men elected to protect and defend the rights of all its citizens, equally.”
The Chief Justice had thrown a flaming ball at Lincoln and the Congress for the failure to effectively deal with the issues of the south over a period of years, as